[John Strung]

I am running low on room on my system partition. Would it do any harm to move the entire Applications folder to a different partition and make an alias to it in its original location?

[OreoCookie]

No, but don't make an alias. Make a symlink.

You cannot follow aliases in the command line, thus some apps might have problems with that.

I did that to my music library. There are two ways:

1. You mount your partition as /Applications

or

2. You create a directory on the new partition, move your apps there and rmdir the Applications folder. Then create a symlink called Applications that points to the new folder on the new partition.

When you have decided on the method, I can give you detailed instructions. Both are very easy, especially the second one.

[John Strung]

Thanks, I will probably try the second. Someone elsewhere suggested the disadvantage of moving applications off the boot partition was that only apps on the boot partition could be prebound and apps off the boot partition would therefore launch more slowly. Any comment?

[madmacgames]

Originally posted by John Strung:
Thanks, I will probably try the second. Someone elsewhere suggested the disadvantage of moving applications off the boot partition was that only apps on the boot partition could be prebound and apps off the boot partition would therefore launch more slowly. Any comment?

I don't know about that, but I do know that MS Office does not like to moved off the / drive. Even with the symbolic link method, it may cause problems. It does not even like having /Users on a different partition with the symbolic link method.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by madmacgames:
I don't know about that, but I do know that MS Office does not like to moved off the / drive. Even with the symbolic link method, it may cause problems. It does not even like having /Users on a different partition with the symbolic link method.

Huh? I used it this way for over a year. Worked great.

[suthercd]

The Installer log lists prebinding processes after OS X updates, and there are OS X installed applications in the /Applications folder that are prebound after updates. Permissions in OS X may be an issue. Notice that your cannot use the Disk Utility to repair permissions on a volume that is not a boot volume. You would not be able to use DU to repair permissions on your Applications folder.

I have lots of apps on another partition, but leave the default Apple structure alone.

Does a symlink to a non boot volume 100% mirror the linked object? That begins to get more complicated. Inodes, HFS+ file structure, BSD and security issues become part of the discussion.

I've have a symlink to my fink installation which is not on the boot volume. It works. However, it is not a system critical installation and involves nothing that is a part of what Apple put in place for a file and system structure. I guess I'm in the "wooden doit... wooden be prudent" group on this one.

Craig

[CharlesS]

In Jaguar and nigher, the Installer has a feature to detect where you have moved the Apple applications, and update them wherever they are.

[madmacgames]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
Huh? I used it this way for over a year. Worked great.

I didn't say it would not work, but it is known to have problems. I tried it as well and Word would crash if I tried to update Office past 10.1.2.

[PubGuy]

Well, I personally leave all my Apple apps in the Applications folder and install 99% of my other apps on a separate drive in a "Programs" folder. I then just have a shortcut in my Applications folder that points to the other volume and the "Programs" folder I created. Works fine -- been this way since 10.0 -- I've had NO problems with MS Office installed in this location (BTW: I've also moved my /Users folder to a different volume and have a symbolic link on my boot drive. Again, No problems whatsoever).

YMMV